


Home to Roost

by Salamandersickfic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Fever, Fluff, Historical, Historical Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Medieval, Middle Ages, Sickfic, Sneezing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 09:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20758373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salamandersickfic/pseuds/Salamandersickfic





	Home to Roost

The castle was too quiet when the Duke was away. Catryn always thought so even if her friends, the wives of the Duke's men, appreciated the respite from cooking and cleaning. It made the rooms echo too large, the stables empty of stamping horses and the kitchens heating only modest amounts of food. Worst of all, the Duke's travels took her new husband from her for weeks at a time.

Catryn had only been married six months and felt Luka's absence sorely when he rode out with the Duke. As Luka's ability as a falconer became more recognised he was away more and more, relied upon as much for his advice as his skills in the hunt. Catryn was proud, of course, but without his homecoming to look forward too the Winter days of spinning and weaving dragged on endlessly.

It was too wet to have the windows open and she sat by the fire, turning her spindle without really looking at it. Her attention was instead on the rainfall growing from a gentle drizzle to a torrential downpour with a racket like handfuls of thrown gravel drumming on the slate roof and plopping into the wide puddles that always formed in the courtyard beyond. The party riding back would surely be soaked through! She could hear the hiss of wind in the trees and the patter of drops on the bottom of a metal bucket, and the suddenly under it all the familiar drumming of horses' hooves coming up the long road to the castle. Her heart leapt as she saw the figures of a score of men hurrying their horses into the shelter of the stables. There was the heavy clunk of lances being set down and the rumble of men's voices cursing the weather and the season. Here are there figures moved around carrying luggage including the cages of new hawks and Catryn rose and peered out of the open door but Luka did not seem to be among them.

Patience had never been her strong suit.

She made her way down to the stables with a lit lantern for the rain had thickened in the sky so that it was like nightfall come early, heavy and blue. From her chambers a flight of wide, shallow steps lead down to the cobbled courtyard, on the other side of which a gate lead straight into the outbuildings. There he was, her husband come home. He stood with his back to her, sorting through the pile of stiff leather and jingling steel to hang his horse's bridle on the right peg. She watched him heft the bulk of his saddle and stand a moment, fascinated by watching the way he acted when he considered himself unobserved. Unlike many men, Luka's demeanour changed little at all even when watched by the Duke himself, though she privately though that here, alone, he moved with a weariness he would never show his peers.

Luka was a tall man with thick, ruler straight hair that had once, rumour has it, been so long it reached his waist. Since he had become head hawk-keeper to the Duke he had cut it off straight just above his shoulders where it flicked like a horses tail when he tossed his head. His face, set with grey eyes, was narrow; high cheekbones and straight, even brows giving him a watchful expression even when at rest, like one of his jessed hawks who knows it has not long to wait before it is tossed skyward once more. Catryn had loved him since she set eyes on him, for both his grim quietness when hunting and his easy laugh when at rest. Sometimes it was as if he were two men, but she loved them both so equally that she felt no pain from it.

He was so soaked by the rain that his hair had separated into a multitude of thick hanks which tapered to points dripping water across his shoulders. They clung around his face stiffly, rather than swinging after him as was his wont. It was so damp it showed dark but she knew a few hours in front of a fire would bring it back to the dull gold she was so fond of. When he lifted his leather jerkin over his head, the fabric of his shirt clung transparently to his back with sweat and rainwater and Catryn could make out every shift and dance of his shoulder blades. The lamplight caught his features as he moved through the space and she thought to herself that he seemed troubled, but perhaps it was merely tiredness that turned the corners of his mouth down and set shadow in the hollow under his eyes.

Presently she heard him draw a sudden in-breath, as though he had received an unpleasant surprise and then he scissored his body forwards, sneezing into the back of his wrist in one sharp release.

“_**nsssscht**__!” _

The sound made Catryn jump. She'd rarely heard Luka make a sound that wasn't completely intentional, and this sounded anything but. She heard in it the clench of his teeth as he tried to stop it escaping, and the breath our afterwards which sounded as startled by it as she had been. In response to outburst she said his name before she could stop herself, though when he snapped his head round to sight her, she couldn't remember if she meant to append it with “_Good evening”_ or _“I came to find you”_ or just _“God bless you.”_

“Luka-”

“I heard you come in.” He told her without turning his head. “Did you hope to catch me unawares my love?”  
  
“Perhaps.” She answered, filled with too much pleasure at his presence to mourn her inability to ever surprise him.

Her satisfaction in his presence seemed mutual. His eyes shone with suppressed amusement and a smile tweaked the corner of his mouth as he took three steps towards her, closing the distance between them to take her hand and kiss it. His lips there were cold, but his breath was warm and it sent thrills through Catryn as it always did. His absence of only seven nights had rendered her hypersensitive to every aspect of him...

When he went to remove his hand she protested, her arms finding his shoulders and guiding him in for a more involved kiss, guiding his palms to the chello curve of her waist, but he did not respond so enthusiastically.

“Ah-” He held up a slender finger to halt her. “I shall embrace you properly when I am not soaked to the skin.”

Catryn, of course, would not have objected in the slightest to being clasped tight to her falconer, no matter how much mud, sweat and rainwater he wore, but Luka was charmingly insistent on treating her like a lady. His hands, meanwhile, found hers and clasped them.

“What if I cannot restrain myself?” She asked.

“I am sure you can, Catryn. Your restraint is one of things I admire the most about you-” He was interrupted when she moved in before he could stop her and squeezed him tight to her, forcing him to finish “-with the possible exception of your stubbornness.”

“There is that.” She agreed. ““If you insist, I will restrain myself for a little while, on the condition that you get out of those wet clothes before you catch your death.”

This last comment seemed to amuse the man, for he tossed his head unconsciously before referring to her next question.

“Did you find a worthy bird for our Duke?”

“Better than worthy. The Conte had a lovely Goshawk caught only yesterday. She has never known any training so I can have my way with her from the start. She will be perfect.”  
“I'm glad.”

“Are you?” He asked. “I shouldn't be surprised if the detail of my work bores you.”

“In small doses after a week apart? Not in the slightest.”

The bird was not jessed to a post as the others were but held in a wicker cage. All was still until Luka opened the door, and the basket began to shake with the frantic scratching and creeling of the distressed creature. It was flapping so hard it sounded as though it would break it's wings against the confines of the cage.

“Here she is.” Luka donned his thick leather gloves which coved him to the elbow and carefully eased the basket open. There was a momentary scuffle of feathers and he held the young bird tightly, one hand wrapped around her legs and disabling her needle talons, the other wrestling with her twisting, snapping beak. “She's a real beauty, just needs some polish."  
  
“Where have I heard that before?” Catryn laughed, eyeing him.“Well, she _is_ beautiful.”

  
The falconer admired his new acquisition with a critical eye before carrying her across the room. The hooded birds turned their blind heads to follow him in eery synchronisation as he gently thrust the goshawk into her own cage and locked the door. The moment she was free she struggled and flapped until he threw an old bit of cloth over the grate at the front and she went still in the darkness.

“She'll be calm by the morning.” He told Catryn, his eyes yellow as the falcon's in the candelight. “Let's get into the warm, I haven't a dry piece of clothing to my name.”   
  
She was about to take his offered arm when he withdrew it just as rapidly, snapping it up to his face and twisting away from her “Ex- exc_use_\- '_**nssccccht**__!”_” was as far as he got, his voice lifting an octave in irritation before he sneezed into the back of his wrist. Rather than raise his head he simply drew one sharp breath in and sneezed again. “'_**nssscch**_**!...**”

At the two bursts of sound the hawks all startled, flapping in panic and straining at the leather thongs that held them down.

“Hush, I did not mean it.” Luka said to his birds as they left the room, injecting his voice with the low, soothing timbre he always used around animals and children. It was so firm, yet so gentle, so utterly _him _that Catryn felt her stomach tighten as he lead her towards the warmth of their shared quarters, repeating “I did not mean it, don't take on so.”

It was only a short walk but it was a damp one. The sky seemed low enough to graze the tops of their heads and Catryn drew her shawl over her hair. Luka could not have been any wetter, but Catryn's mouth still tightened in sympathy as he shivered.

“You are fortunate I am such close friends with the maids.” Catryn said over her shoulder as she allowed her husband to open the door to their chambers for her.

“How so?” He asked.

“Because they kindly agreed to run you a bath.”

She thought she saw his normally steady brows raise a fraction. A bath was an unprecedented luxury- the time, energy and man (well, woman) power it took to fill the tin bath was not to be wasted on the likes of him. One kettle for washing was their quota, and they were glad of it.

“They needn't-” Luka began, only to notice the tub placed close to the fire in their sitting area, already full and steaming.

“You may as well now that it's here. Come, before it gets cold. It'll do you good, you're half drowned.”

True modesty and manners dictated that Catryn ought to leave the room, or at least set up a screen to give her husband his privacy, but they rarely bothered with such formality. Catryn could only attribute this to their being a couple matched by affection rather than their parent's planning.

Besides, she mused as she watched him undress, it would be an awful waste of a lovely view.

Despite his initial protest, Luka sank gratefully into the water with a heavy sigh, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. The tub was almost comically small for a tall man, so that he was forced to jackknife his knees nearly to his chin in order to fit, but he did so without complaint. He began to soap himself all over, not neglecting his rain-sodden hair. Judging from the colour the water was going, it was well needed. Yet something about the water, or the steam rising from it, did not seem to be quite agree with him. Rather, his nose began to run, causing him to sniffle damply in an attempt to quell the fluttering tickle the sensation prompted in his nostrils. No amount of discreet sniffs or applications of his knuckle beneath his nose could quell the sensation which made his breath waver, then catch, then-

“_**KKSSChiuh**__!” _

He sneezed before he could react, before he could raise a hand or even minimise the sound into the cat-like expulsions which had overtaken him in the stables. This sound was thicker, more emphatic, and his whole body seized with it, causing water to slop over the edge of the tub. A ticklish pause and - “_**ihKKSCHHuuh**_!”- he sneezed again, deep and desperate despite his every attempt to muffle it.

“God bless!” His wife exclaimed in surprise.

“Thank you.” He replied absently, shaking his head a little to clear it.

Catryn should have been dressing herself but could not draw herself away from him. Instead she kneeled by the edge of the bathtub, trailing her fingers idly through the water. Though steam rose under her touch, there was gooseflesh on Luka's skin where he was not submerged.  
  
“You're still shivering.” She tutted, taking the excuse to splash warm water over his upper arms.“Was it very cold, out in the woods? We have had rain here all week.”

“Aye, it was wet enough.” He replied mildly.

“You never do complain, do you? It is almost unnatural. One would think you had no thoughts on the experience at all, while I've been here worrying for you.”

She paused in washing his back to give him a jesting smile. Luka merely shrugged, his own lips quirking up in an expression of pleasure. Why should he complain? The journey was over now and his wife was again beside him, looking an absolute picture as she knelt beside the bathtub to tend to him with her sleeves rolled over her arms and a flush in her cheeks from the warmth of the water. Strands of her brown hair had loosened from their fastening and drifted about her head, sent wavy by the steam. He toyed with one them idly, tucking it behind her ear. The next moment his fingers migrated to his nose and pinched at the bridge of it, where he was developing a definite ache to go with the sneezing. Yes, if it wasn't for that one thing this scene would be perfect. That was close enough for him.

“I never complain.” He echoed her after a beat, and with that he rose from the bath to dress for the evening.

* * *

The wretched wet weather did not ease at all but the Duke's Yule feast began regardless. As darkness fell a steady stream of folk dressed in their festival finery made their way into great hall and in time Luka and Catryn made ready to join them.

“What do you think?” Catryn asked her husband as they passed together through the cloistered walkway that connected their rooms to the main hall.

“I think it is a good deal of frivolity, though well meant.” He said, more dryly than he had intended.

“You're sour tonight!” She gave him an affectionate dig in the ribs where he held her arm, hard enough to make him flinch. “I meant what do you think of me.”

Luka duly gave her a look for several warm seconds, taking some distance and clasping her hands in his. She looked wonderful with her hair bound up in the circular style of the court, her robe simple but cut low enough to show broad, freckled collarbones.

“Ah, you know what I think of you.”

She was even pretty when he frowned at him. Unfortunately the tingling in his nose chose that moment to rise to a distracting level and Luka barely had time to drop her hands and turn his head before he sneezed again.  
  
“_Nkkksscchuh! __**NNGkt-**__” _-he tried to restrain the sound but it was impossible- “_**sschuh**_!”

His nose was dripping in the aftermath and he dabbed discreetly at his upper lip with his handkerchief before facing her again. He dearly hoped that this was not becoming a pattern.

“You've been doing a good deal of that.” Catryn said, catching his train of thought as she caught his palm and squeezed it fondly.

“Aye.” He shrugged, resigned. “And it is less than ideal for a night like tonight. But let us hurry, I can see most people are already seated.”

Luka spoke the truth that he had no particular desire to attend. There would be warmth and cheer but also knights who had taken too much ale, and along with that went clamour and shouting; it was not his preferred form of recreation at the best of times and least of all when his head was pounding. Catryn at least was excited; for her the Duke's feasts still held an element of novelty.

Luka had been sitting at the lower tables further away from the nobles since he'd taken his apprenticeship to the old Falconer, Jonner, and when Jonner had made the decision to retire gracefully Luka had filled his place and quickly become a favourite of the Duke's. His marriage to Catryn earned her a place at the table, pulling her from the village where she was born and into the light of myriad torches and the huge fire that roared in the grate and swallowed what looked like half oaks in it's black maw.

He took her cloak from her and bid her take her place at one of the long tables between the men he worked with and their wives. The table was decked with the same evergreens and winter berries that hung around the window-ledges and the fireplace. The fire, though festive, did not quite warm the room. At least at their table, most of the heat was lost to the vaulted ceiling and the chill, grey flagstones beneath their feet.

Luka certainly felt it. Despite the bath he moved with lingering stiffness and his wife often glanced at him to catch him rolling his shoulders out or lilting his head from first one side then another after a crack of relief that didn't come.

“Have you strained a muscle?” Catryn asked at last.

Luka's head span to catch her eye, guilty for a second like she'd caught him at something.

“Very sharp.” he praised her. “No, but my head aches.”

He said it as though stating the weather or making an inane comment about the silverware but the very unassuming nature of his confession sparked her sympathy and drew her to him. Her fingers discreetly rose to the back of his neck until they nestled in the hollow where his spine met his skull and drew tiny circles in the over-tight muscles. Luka did not turn his head from following the conversation of the Master Gamekeeper, but under the table his fingers rested gratefully on her knee. That was everything she needed to know.

Subtle as they were, they did not remain entirely unobserved.

“Ah, the newlyweds can't keep their hands off of each other!” Chimed in an older lady beside Catryn- Bronwyn, the Gamekeeper's wife.

“That'll pass!” The Master Gamekeeper laughed from across the table and Catryn felt a blush rising in her cheeks even though it was only harmless teasing. Luka gripped her thigh under the table and gave her the tiniest amused smile.

“The little they know.” He leaned in beside her to murmur it into her ear. Close as he was, she must have been the only person who noticed the corner of his mouth spasm chaotically, or heard the single, surprised breath he drew before sneezing into the space behind her.

“'_**nssccccht**__!” _A sound so well contained she could hear the bite of his teeth in it. That was perhaps his undoing and that unsatisfying sound was by chased another, much louder.

“_**IIUSShuh**__!” _

“Excuse me” he murmured politely to the room in general.

No one else batted an eyelid, not at first, but it was then that Catryn became certain that something more than tension was troubling her falconer.

The food arrived then. Catryn helped herself from the trenchers as they were passed around but Luka served himself sparingly. Somehow even after a week on journey rations the meat and heavy bread did not appeal overmuch. Out of politeness' sake he piled his plate a respectful amount and pushed what he had around in a show of enjoyment. It was hard to feel hungry when his head ached and his sinuses felt both raw and full. Worse, the steam from the food and hot wine set his nose trickling and he was soon sniffling to clear it and hating himself for doing so. Each persistent sniff sparked a uncomfortably ticklish sensation that made him place his glass down uneasily.

He could feel his features shifting even as he tried to still them, heard his own breath catch in a chaotic “hh-hh-_hhh-_” and his head dipped with the inevitable sneeze which was so emphatic that the corner of his watering eyes caught his tablemates' starts of surprise.

“_**ihKKSCHtt!”**_

“God bless you!” Exclaimed Catryn, echoed by Bronwyn and a few others. He tried to speak but the itching peaked again and he could only-

“_**KKSCHtt!**_”

Damn, _again?_ Could only-

“iiht-_NSScchu!_ \---_Nsschhu!_ \---_**NNSCHiuh**_!”

The three came one after another, crisp, precise and not at all muffled by the cup of his hands. He lifted his head to catch several raised eyebrows and another round of “Bless you”s.

“My thanks. Please excuse me.” Luka blinked his way back to his usual composure, coolly changing the subject. Conversation flowed on but the needling itch at the back of his nose did not pass so easily.

He was grateful when the tables were cleared and pushed back so that the guests could rise and circulate around the hall, mingling. Musicians in the corner beside the Duke's high chair struck up a jaunty song and soon couples were dancing.

He saw Catryn's eyes light up at the sound and she looked to him. Luka himself was a fair dancer, Catryn a better one; she enjoyed it more and he lived to please her, though he was not certain how his foggy head would take the sprightly gavotte that was playing. The song was followed by a more stately number and at that he took his wife's hand and lead her out onto the floor.

“Be gentle with me.” He warned her as he placed his hand around her waist.

“Why? Are you quite well, love?”

“I don't know.” Luka said softly. “Just go easy.”

“I will.” Catryn reached to kiss him on the cheek. He was a tall man and she had to stand on tiptoe to do it. While she was there she brushed a strand of tawny hair that had fallen across his brow. “Oh, you're pale.”

“Tis nothing, truly.” He assured her. “Now dance with me. Show those knights and nobles what they're missing.”

When the song wound to a close Luka held her as tightly as was proper, kissing her soundly. The slight exertion had tired him more than was reasonable.In fact he felt almost light headed as well as uncomfortably warm with an unwholesome heat that came in a sudden wave and flushed his face. It felt worryingly like the start of a fever- he must be sicker than he'd thought. How had this come on so quickly?

Catryn seemed to catch his chain of thought. “Perhaps you should take a rest. You've had a long day.”

Luka heard disappointment in her voice- another leaping song had started and she was bobbing her head minutely to the beat, eager to dance again. “Perhaps. But no need for you to come with me, love. I'll go and sit quiet, but you should dance with Gareth or Ioan.” He pointed her to a couple of his colleagues, trusty men who were both married themselves. “Gareth's wife is still in childbed, he'll be glad of a partner.”

It was not difficult to find his wife a respectable dancing partner. Catryn joined the fray with a concerned look over her shoulder which Luka waved away. At least one of them ought to have a good time this evening and he himself gained a quiet pleasure from watching her.

At first he sat on the edge of the circle, chatting with the spectators to the dance. After only a few minutes the urge to sneeze took him again and he excused himself to a far corner of the room where he would be less observed. Luka did not quite manage to absent himself before he was taken by a fit. His walk away was punctuated by almost noiseless bursts- “ --_Nsschhu! --hhuh? ----hkNsscht!” _which nevertheless shook his shoulders and doubled him almost in two.

That wretched itch still persisted as surely as if he had inhaled a piece of down and couldn't shake it loose no matter how he-

““_ii'__**USSHiuh**__!”_

Luka found himself at the far side of the room, unable to do anything for a moment but lean against the cold stone of a windowsill and duck desperately into his handkerchief. That tickling, featherish feeling flared with every breath in or out and he found himself drawing deliberately deeper breaths, desperate to coax it out and be done.

“_\--hh-- ah-?_” An uncomfortable, wavering pause. “_**Hah-USSHiuuh!!**_”

The resulting sneeze was louder than he'd thought himself capable of, but it finally purged the sensation. He'd never sneezed so much from a cold.

“Good grief! Are you alright, lad?”

Luka startled but it was only the Master Gamekeeper laying a concerned hand on his shoulder. The big man patted him jovially, apparently amused that the notoriously reserved hawk-keeper was capable of such a display.

“Quite alright, thank you.” Luka offered the man a rare, disarming smile. “Perhaps the cold air...?”

“Is that so?” The Gamekeeper shrugged, moving off and leaving Luka alone again. Perhaps it was better to stay here in the doorway, caught between the heat of bodies in the hall and the cold wind from outside so that he could try to regulate himself while chills traded with fever warmth at ever shortening intervals.

He waved away the ale when it was brought round, instead drinking glass after glass of cold water which could not slake the sudden, drying thirst that made his voice low and tight. Without the distraction of a companion he became more aware of the unfortunate state of his sinuses, and the sneezing seemed to come more frequently.

He was just working up to feeling properly sorry for himself when Catryn returned to him, a glow in her cheeks from the dancing and the wine. She found him in the crowded room with the instinctive ease of one of his hawks after a mouse, and the same heightened sense drew her palm to his cheek before he could bat it away.

She must have caught the frustrated, embarrassed tilt of his mouth, too, because she opened her lips to say something and then shut them again. Her eyes were kind and playful but too sympathetic to tease him. Instead she pushed up on her tiptoes to put a kiss on his too-warm skin where her hand had been.

“I'm feeling a little tired. I think I ought to go home.” Catryn even kept a straight face as she said it, and Luka thought that he loved her more in than moment than he ever had.

“Really?” He closed his eyes to her kiss, savouring it. Perhaps the fever had peaked his senses but he seemed to feel it burning there long after she had left. “I...” He sighed and resigned himself. “I think that would be for the best.”

“I'll get our things.” She slipped away through the bustle and music not fast enough to miss Luka wrenching with another exhausted _**“ii'USSHuh**__!” _against his handkerchief.

* * * * *

They made their way back across the damp courtyard. The cobbles were slippery with wet but the rain had abated. Uneven torrents still poured from the guttering around the buildings, swirling down the drains towards the river, and the lights of the house shimmered very yellow against the blue-grey of the sky, guiding their feet to their chambers. It was still cold, though. The moment Luka stepped outside the convulsive, teeth-chattering shivers which he had so recently quelled began again, his exposed skin stinging from the wet air as from a slap. He did not complain though he did breathe a heavy, congested sigh as the door closed.

Catryn allowed herself to be led as though she was the one who had tired and must be taken to bed, a small warmth glowing in her chest at the knowledge that the situation was quite the reverse. She did nothing to refute this until her husband was safely within the warmth of their chamber, and there she did not need to for Luka reacted to the change in temperature by starting away from her, bracing one hand on the wall for balance and sneezing convulsively.

“_ii'USSSHchuh_! _Hhh...hhih... … iISSCHHuh! Ih'ISSCHHiuH! ..._I beg your pardon.” He said, raising his eyes to hers with a mixture of propriety and shame warring in his eyes. This expression only lasted for a minute before it dissolved again as the twitching irritation latent in his nose travelled across the rest of his face.

He did not turn from her this time, being utterly distracted.

Here in the privacy of his chamber he allowed himself to draw heavier breaths, his voice forming a small questioning noise as his hands hovered vaguely before his face. “_hh.. ihh..” _Luka's straight, usually even brows creased upwards in the centre and his nostrils flickered ticklishly as his breath caught in a hiccuping gasp. “._ih_.. _ihi...” _

“_**ii'USSHuh**__!”_

Even after the anticipation, it came in a rush that surprised him. The force of it flung him nearly double, a motion that made the room swim about him in a blur of feverish colour. Reflexively, Luka took his hand from the wall to shield his wife from the expulsion and this was his undoing, causing him to stagger a step, nearly falling. Then Catryn was there, catching him by the elbow as he had caught her so many times. Her arms were pleasingly solid around him as she steadied him, turning the motion into a brief, affectionate embrace.

“Pardon me, please...” He began, opening his eyes to see Catryn's own very close to his face.

She silenced his apology with a gentle touch to his cheek. “Well, God bless you, love. Come to bed now.”

He laughed, sparking a barking cough. “Gladly.”

END.


End file.
